Week 4 is normally the final week of the non-conference season, which usually means each team plays a final glorified high school to tune up before the draining conference schedule. That is the case for most B1G teams this year, but outside of that there are some major conference matchups around the country. We are going to start getting into the time of year where multiple top 25 teams will lose every week, and possibly 1-2 top 10 teams. All of the key matchups this week seem to be late afternoon or night games, which makes it tough for fans to choose which game to actually watch.
Missouri @ South Carolina 3:30pm
The Gamecocks are a top ten team at this point, but I have not been that impressed so far. It seems like it is only a matter of time before they lose their first game of the year. Missouri was impressive for the first half of the their SEC opener against Georgia, but that was at home. I am excited to see what energy they come out with in this one. Marcus Lattimore continues to slide down the Heisman watch with sub-100 yard games. Will he be able to break out in this game? I think South Carolina should win this game, but the final score will be closer than they would like.
Kansas State @ Oklahoma 7:50pm
I really have no idea how good either of these teams are. Oklahoma struggled with UTEP in their opener and then Kansas State blew the doors off of a terrible Miami team. I don’t see a lot of defense being played in this game, and will likely come down to a battle between the quarterbacks (Colin Klein and Landry Jones). Jones has been prone to turning the ball over in big games, but he returned to school for his senior year to continue to improve his decision making and mistakes. Klein is a one man wrecking crew and likely will need to have a big game to knock off the top 5 team on the road. I just don’t trust Jones, partially because who is named Landry, but also because I think he will have at least one bonehead play to keep the Wildcats around. Klein can put up big numbers against this defense, and Kansas State is a difficult team to come back against with their control the ball style of play. Just the way the season has gone so far, I like K-State in this one.
Syracuse @ Minnesota 8:00pm
Minnesota is coming into this game with a 3-0 record, compared to the Orange’s 1-2. Syracuse has played a little tougher competition so far though (Northwestern and USC). I don’t think the Golden Gophers can score enough points, without Gray, to keep up with the Nasib passing attack. If he can limit his turnovers, this game might actually get a bit ugly by the end.
Clemson @ Florida State 8:00pm
I don’t know how much of an upset this can be with 2 top 10 teams meeting for the national game of the week, but since FSU is the pretty pick to make a national championship game and they are at home, a Tiger win would be an upset in my book. These two teams seem to be mirror images of each other over the past 5-7 years. Both continually get top 10 recruiting classes, and both continually under-achieve in actual games. There will be a lot of NFL talent on the field in Tallahassee, but I just don’t see either team running the table and going undefeated. Clemson has a high powered offense and Florida State has a very good defense. But since these two teams have scheduled such “difficult” teams in the first 3 weeks (by difficult I mean it was a challenge scoring on every possession and they both might have punted a combined 4 times this season), we have no idea how good these teams really are. I think Clemson will be able to score points on the Seminole defense with Taj Boyd and Sammy Watkins, and I don’t think the FSU offense will be able to match the Tiger fire power. Look for this to be an exciting game played in the 30-40 point range.
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